Mercedes will roll out its new W14 charger on Wednesday at Silverstone, and a report from Italy claims the German outfit's engine department has achieved double-digit gains over the winter.
Mercedes heads into the new F1 season on the back of a dismal campaign in 2022 - at least by the Brackely squad's standards – during which it achieved but a single win, courtesy of George Russell in Brazil.
The championship winning team struggled for months to rein in the chronic porpoising of its bucking bronco that weighed on the W13's performance.
But significant progress was achieved in the back half of 2022, and many predict the Silver Arrows outfit to recoup this year its spot at the head of the grid.
The word on the street is that Mercedes' new W14 has retained the zero sidepod concept of its predecessor, a design approach alluding to by team boss Toto Wolff earlier this year.
"The last time I saw it [the W14], I thought ‘oh this looks the same’ but here’s hoping it’s not the same," commented Wolff.
"I’m pretty much like you, I go into the wind tunnel and it looks like this year’s car but they say to me it’s very different underneath.
"It’s about the airflow, it’s about the weight distribution, it’s about the aero map."
But beyond the car's aerodynamic characteristics, a report from Italian website Formu1a.uno claims that Mercedes' HPP engineers in Brixworth have been able to extract an additional 10 bhp from their engine while protecting the unit's reliability.
The alleged gains have been achieved despite the current freeze on engine development dictated by Formula 1's engine regulations. The latter do not allow for hardware updates but do permit specific reliability changes.
Rumors of Mercedes' power unit gains follow a similar story recently carried by the Italian media concerning Ferrari, with allegations that the Scuderia's engineers had beefed up their engine by a massive 30 bhp.
New Ferrari team boss Frédéric Vasseur laughed off the story however.
"I don’t know where the numbers are coming from but it is just a joke!" said the Frenchman.
"We made some steps, but it is just about reliability. I think the performance of the engine was not an issue at all.
"The issue was the reliability, and the first target is to fix it. So far it looks okay, but the reality on the track is a different aspect."
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
